- Email: [email protected]
Building a Legacy: Passion With a Purpose
Lessons Learned Katherine Vestal, RN, PhD, FAAN, FACHE
Building a Legacy: Passion With a Purpose T he word legacy tends to lead people to ponder what will be lasting from all of their work and contributions after they leave an organization. It is something leaders think about as they near the end of their careers. They begin to wonder what they will be remembered for after they are gone. It is a sobering thought because it requires that you define what you have done in your long career that has and will make a difference. Often we are challenged to stop and think what we would write on our tombstone that, of course, can only be a 1 liner. “She always came to work on time.” “He was tolerant of a lot of bad behavior on the unit.” Perhaps as legacies, not something we would consider worthwhile in the long run. The challenge is to redefine the term legacy as an important leadership component that will drive results that have long value. Most of us would far rather have people say, “She developed a lot of leaders who have gone on to great success.” Or “He was able to guide many staff to achieve outstanding results on a daily basis.” In other words, the leader made a difference that produced a long-lasting impact, both on the organization and the individuals that were mentored. Thus, there is a real need for today’s leaders to reconsider the role of legacy in how they focus their efforts and influence others to be the best they can be. The concept of legacy requires that you reflect on the personal attributes that are your greatest potential. What things do you like to do that are uniquely a part of your strengths, and how will you develop them further? Over and above your expected job performance, what else do you contribute to the future of your people and organization that will have a lasting impact on the long-term successes of each? How will you sustain the support of these contributions to others as the pressures of your own role seem to sap all of your time and energy and make it difficult to find time to sustain the momentum of the development of others? A good example is that there was a time when the chief nursing executive was an active
10
Nurse Leader
and constant developer of middle managers. The role of the chief nursing officer (CNO) was more narrowly focused, and there was both time and expectations that such teaching would take place. This clearly served as a way to grow middle managers for promotion and to enable a sense of succession by knowing the managers personally. Over time, the role of the CNO has increased exponentially, with many additional people and functions to oversee, resulting in further layering of management and intensity of the role itself. So the ability to closely raise and mentor other leaders has changed. Having said that, if your belief is that your legacy as a leader will be to prepare many other leaders to impact the profession and the healthcare industry, then you will have to find ways to do that on a constant and continuing basis. If your desire is to build a legacy of scholarship and evidence-based practice, then you will find ways to ensure the culture and operations will support that requirement. So the concept of building your leadership legacy is closely akin to developing your leadership skills, only it is clearly focused on establishing a personal commitment to goals that will be your passion for a career in leadership. It can happen as soon as you become a leader, or as you evolve and explore the things you excel at. It can develop as you see needs that are unmet, or as you see people you would like to invest in. You do not have to declare it as a legacy, but over time, you will live it as a legacy and that is what makes it lasting. How rewarding would it be to hear from leaders all over the world and in a variety of roles who never fail to let you know how you influenced their career? Or how rewarding would it be to see your organization recognized for some outstanding result that you made major contributions to? That simply put is legacy. So if you are not leaving your legacy to chance—the chance that it might be positive or negative—.it is helpful to understand some practical ways that you can advance those things that you would most like to be known for.
April 2014
• Know what is important to you. It could easily be said that everything you do at work is important but that gets you nowhere on building a legacy because all of your time will be co-opted by the unrelenting issues of the day. Knowing what is important to you will be defined by asking yourself, “Really, at the end of the day, what is of lasting importance that I need to do, or say or define that will make me proud in the long term?” It is easy to answer if we ask this question about our children because we can see a clear linkage to raising them into adulthood to be good citizens. It is more difficult in a complex organization that creates demands that are not so closely linked to future paybacks. Legacy is a deep sense of believing that something lasting must be accomplished. • Raise yourself out of the front-line weeds. Finding answers and demonstrating commitment to lasting influence is unlikely to occur when you are deeply entrenched in the day-to-day detail of your operations. Of course you devote time to that, but in this case, not all of your time. Great leaders need time to plan, make investments in people, and evaluate what is working. The answers to that will likely not come from changing a central line or answering endless e-mails. It is the result of purposeful thinking and preparation to make a difference with the issues that matter to you. This activity is not to make yourself look like a hero, but to establish the patterns that will result in progress and attention to the details of building a desirable future. • Look, listen, and study. Take some of your time to look at other leaders who are accomplishing what matters to you. Listen to the stories people tell www.nurseleader.com
about how they came to be good at their passion. Study the learnings that will be helpful to you in developing a direction and a toolkit for success. Write a script for yourself to communicate your commitment to a goal and talk about it ad nauseum. If your passion is to develop nurses as teachers, you will attract those who want to learn. If your passion is to instill outstanding project management knowledge and skills in managers, those who share that interest will seek you out. If your passion is to lead with inclusion and create a truly professional environment, you will attract like-minded nurses. The point is, as you focus on a legacy that you want to see in action, you will find that others will seek your influence and guidance. • Let them fly. As you invest in others or the organization, you will undoubtedly have huge successes with staff. As they become proficient or even outstanding, they may need to leave to advance their own careers. Or you may need to leave to advance yours. In either case, the win is that by advancing others, there is now room to move more nurses into the queue. Over a career, there is almost no end to the number of leaders you can influence or develop. Your legacy is then bigger than you imagined. So the idea of legacy is really compelling in that it creates for you a superordinate goal that exceeds the daily boundaries of your role. It gives you permission to focus on specific activities that can and probably will be a passion throughout your career, and if it changes over time, that is also good. You will inspire people, and you can give the needed attention to those peak performers who need some extra investment to become more valued to the organization and profession. Don’t let your leadership legacy get lost in the day-to-day grind of meetings,
e-mail, and crises. This is one area a leader needs to guard and nurture so that as we all move through our career, we can ensure that we are leaving valuable contributions that will endure over time. Katherine Vestal, RN, PhD, FAAN, FACHE, is president of Work Innovations, Inc., in Lake Leelanau, MI. She can be reached at [email protected]. 1541-4612/2014 Copyright 2014 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2014.01.012
Nurse Leader
11
Building a Legacy: Passion With a Purpose T he word legacy tends to lead people to ponder what will be lasting from all of their work and contributions after they leave an organization. It is something leaders think about as they near the end of their careers. They begin to wonder what they will be remembered for after they are gone. It is a sobering thought because it requires that you define what you have done in your long career that has and will make a difference. Often we are challenged to stop and think what we would write on our tombstone that, of course, can only be a 1 liner. “She always came to work on time.” “He was tolerant of a lot of bad behavior on the unit.” Perhaps as legacies, not something we would consider worthwhile in the long run. The challenge is to redefine the term legacy as an important leadership component that will drive results that have long value. Most of us would far rather have people say, “She developed a lot of leaders who have gone on to great success.” Or “He was able to guide many staff to achieve outstanding results on a daily basis.” In other words, the leader made a difference that produced a long-lasting impact, both on the organization and the individuals that were mentored. Thus, there is a real need for today’s leaders to reconsider the role of legacy in how they focus their efforts and influence others to be the best they can be. The concept of legacy requires that you reflect on the personal attributes that are your greatest potential. What things do you like to do that are uniquely a part of your strengths, and how will you develop them further? Over and above your expected job performance, what else do you contribute to the future of your people and organization that will have a lasting impact on the long-term successes of each? How will you sustain the support of these contributions to others as the pressures of your own role seem to sap all of your time and energy and make it difficult to find time to sustain the momentum of the development of others? A good example is that there was a time when the chief nursing executive was an active
10
Nurse Leader
and constant developer of middle managers. The role of the chief nursing officer (CNO) was more narrowly focused, and there was both time and expectations that such teaching would take place. This clearly served as a way to grow middle managers for promotion and to enable a sense of succession by knowing the managers personally. Over time, the role of the CNO has increased exponentially, with many additional people and functions to oversee, resulting in further layering of management and intensity of the role itself. So the ability to closely raise and mentor other leaders has changed. Having said that, if your belief is that your legacy as a leader will be to prepare many other leaders to impact the profession and the healthcare industry, then you will have to find ways to do that on a constant and continuing basis. If your desire is to build a legacy of scholarship and evidence-based practice, then you will find ways to ensure the culture and operations will support that requirement. So the concept of building your leadership legacy is closely akin to developing your leadership skills, only it is clearly focused on establishing a personal commitment to goals that will be your passion for a career in leadership. It can happen as soon as you become a leader, or as you evolve and explore the things you excel at. It can develop as you see needs that are unmet, or as you see people you would like to invest in. You do not have to declare it as a legacy, but over time, you will live it as a legacy and that is what makes it lasting. How rewarding would it be to hear from leaders all over the world and in a variety of roles who never fail to let you know how you influenced their career? Or how rewarding would it be to see your organization recognized for some outstanding result that you made major contributions to? That simply put is legacy. So if you are not leaving your legacy to chance—the chance that it might be positive or negative—.it is helpful to understand some practical ways that you can advance those things that you would most like to be known for.
April 2014
• Know what is important to you. It could easily be said that everything you do at work is important but that gets you nowhere on building a legacy because all of your time will be co-opted by the unrelenting issues of the day. Knowing what is important to you will be defined by asking yourself, “Really, at the end of the day, what is of lasting importance that I need to do, or say or define that will make me proud in the long term?” It is easy to answer if we ask this question about our children because we can see a clear linkage to raising them into adulthood to be good citizens. It is more difficult in a complex organization that creates demands that are not so closely linked to future paybacks. Legacy is a deep sense of believing that something lasting must be accomplished. • Raise yourself out of the front-line weeds. Finding answers and demonstrating commitment to lasting influence is unlikely to occur when you are deeply entrenched in the day-to-day detail of your operations. Of course you devote time to that, but in this case, not all of your time. Great leaders need time to plan, make investments in people, and evaluate what is working. The answers to that will likely not come from changing a central line or answering endless e-mails. It is the result of purposeful thinking and preparation to make a difference with the issues that matter to you. This activity is not to make yourself look like a hero, but to establish the patterns that will result in progress and attention to the details of building a desirable future. • Look, listen, and study. Take some of your time to look at other leaders who are accomplishing what matters to you. Listen to the stories people tell www.nurseleader.com
about how they came to be good at their passion. Study the learnings that will be helpful to you in developing a direction and a toolkit for success. Write a script for yourself to communicate your commitment to a goal and talk about it ad nauseum. If your passion is to develop nurses as teachers, you will attract those who want to learn. If your passion is to instill outstanding project management knowledge and skills in managers, those who share that interest will seek you out. If your passion is to lead with inclusion and create a truly professional environment, you will attract like-minded nurses. The point is, as you focus on a legacy that you want to see in action, you will find that others will seek your influence and guidance. • Let them fly. As you invest in others or the organization, you will undoubtedly have huge successes with staff. As they become proficient or even outstanding, they may need to leave to advance their own careers. Or you may need to leave to advance yours. In either case, the win is that by advancing others, there is now room to move more nurses into the queue. Over a career, there is almost no end to the number of leaders you can influence or develop. Your legacy is then bigger than you imagined. So the idea of legacy is really compelling in that it creates for you a superordinate goal that exceeds the daily boundaries of your role. It gives you permission to focus on specific activities that can and probably will be a passion throughout your career, and if it changes over time, that is also good. You will inspire people, and you can give the needed attention to those peak performers who need some extra investment to become more valued to the organization and profession. Don’t let your leadership legacy get lost in the day-to-day grind of meetings,
e-mail, and crises. This is one area a leader needs to guard and nurture so that as we all move through our career, we can ensure that we are leaving valuable contributions that will endure over time. Katherine Vestal, RN, PhD, FAAN, FACHE, is president of Work Innovations, Inc., in Lake Leelanau, MI. She can be reached at [email protected]. 1541-4612/2014 Copyright 2014 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2014.01.012
Nurse Leader
11